1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally in the field of semiconductors. More particularly, the invention is in the field of fabrication of capacitors in semiconductor dies.
2. Background Art
Metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors have been extensively utilized in the fabrication of integrated analog and mixed signal circuits on semiconductor dies. A MIM capacitor typically includes a MIM capacitor dielectric situated between lower and upper metal plates, which form the electrodes of the MIM capacitor. Conventionally, MIM capacitors can be fabricated on semiconductor dies during back-end-of-line (BEOL) processing.
A conventional MIM capacitor can be fabricated, for example, by inserting a specialized dielectric layer for a MIM capacitor dielectric and specialized metal layers for lower and upper MIM capacitor electrodes in the otherwise unused “vertical” space available between interconnect metal layers on a semiconductor die during BEOL processing. However, inserting the specialized dielectric and metal layers required to form the MIM capacitor dielectric and the bottom and upper MIM capacitor electrodes during BEOL processing can require multiple process steps and masks, which can undesirably increase manufacturing cost.